


You Can Be Alice I'll Be The Mad Hatter

by Krasimer



Series: Without a Trace (This Was Done In Silence) [4]
Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: And things go bad, Because things are happening, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Eddie Gluskin Being Eddie Gluskin, Eddie kisses Waylon, F/M, Fuck Murkoff, Murkoff Corporation, Walrider Miles Upshur, Walrider Waylon Park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 22:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13374519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: Miles cautioned him to be quiet, leading the way in and around corners. Some quick thinking on Waylon’s part had gotten them a schematic of the building and Miles had only needed to look at it for a few minutes before they had gone in.Waylon followed along, trying to blend in as much as possible. With computer bags slung over both shoulders and his usual wrinkled-programmer look back, he probably looked like he belonged in the IT department. He had swapped out the cane Miles had bought for him after an intense debate about the merits of both. It had been decided, eventually, that the normal cane would look less invasive.





	You Can Be Alice I'll Be The Mad Hatter

It was, somehow, easier than predicted to get into the Murkoff building they were targeting.

Miles cautioned him to be quiet, leading the way in and around corners. Some quick thinking on Waylon’s part had gotten them a schematic of the building and Miles had only needed to look at it for a few minutes before they had gone in.

Waylon followed along, trying to blend in as much as possible. With computer bags slung over both shoulders and his usual wrinkled-programmer look back, he probably looked like he belonged in the IT department. He had swapped out the cane Miles had bought for him after an intense debate about the merits of both. It had been decided, eventually, that the normal cane would look less invasive.

Miles hadn’t been happy about it, but a good compromise was that Waylon had the knife tucked into a sheath under his pant leg.

That had been half an hour before and Waylon kept waiting for the alarms to blare. It had been almost _too easy_ to get inside. The belly of the computer lay open before him, wires exposed, as if just waiting for Waylon to pull secrets from within.

Which, honestly unsurprisingly, was when gas started being pumped into the room.

If he listened closely, he could hear an alarm, off in the distance.

Waylon felt his breath hitch, his anxiety building.

“No, no,” Eddie muttered, his voice a ghost in Waylon’s ear. “Something went wrong, Darling, something has gone wrong and it threatens you now.”

“Try to breathe, Park,” Chris’s voice followed, tenser than Waylon had ever heard him be before. “If you panic, you’ll breathe in more of this shit and you’ll breathe it faster. Stay calm, keep breathing normally. Who knows what they’re pumping into the system.”

Waylon nodded, continuing to attach his devices into the body of the system. “Almost done,” he murmured, pausing to wipe the sweat off his brow. He could practically feel both variants pressing in closer, as if they could put a physical shield between him and the gas hissing into the room from the vents. Strangely enough, he could feel the difference between the two nanite-ghosts as they stood next to him. Eddie was smaller and felt more like a blast of hot air at his left side, defending the part of him that was actually working, left-handed as Waylon was.

Chris was a resolute wall of aggressive protectiveness at his right side, the weaker part of him that sometimes needed a bit more protecting.

A klaxon filled the air and Waylon winced as he almost slipped, righting himself just in time not to sever a wire. “Just a few more seconds,” he whispered, grabbing the small solder gun and affixing one wire in place. With that done, he grabbed for the casing of the computer and put it back together, moving quickly. If he was lucky, no one who came to find his body would see the difference in the physical system, would not locate the information draining programs and devices he had put into place.

His head felt too big and he blinked a couple of times, leaning back against the wall. “Park!” Chris’s voice, already a ghost of a noise, seemed to be coming from the end of a long tunnel, too far away to really get a good grasp on.

“Think it’s a sedative,” Waylon told him.

The world went black around him as his eyes rolled backward in his head.

 

They were at a charity ball.

“This is my wife, Lisa,” Waylon smiled as he introduced her, trying to ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach that said danger was coming. There was something about the way the crowd looked, the way they seemed to move as one.

When he blinked, they had separated out and begun to move normally. It was easy enough to tell himself that he had been imagining things. Tell himself that there was no way he had been seeing the crowd move like a singular being.

In the background, a man with broad shoulders and dark hair stared at him, seeming to glitch for a moment. He stood out from the rest, despite his clothing almost blending in.

It made Waylon shiver.

Lisa turned to speak with someone, another woman who looked –

Waylon shook his head and blinked, muttering something to Lisa about finding something to drink. He received a nod in return and he watched her for a moment, feeling suddenly out of place and a little lost. Something about her was wrong.

He blinked.

Lisa was as perfect and beautiful as she had always been. Her smile as she spoke with the other woman was a radiant thing, her dark skin only accented by the shimmer of her makeup, the crimson of her lipstick. She had bound back her curls in an almost replica of the way she had worn them at their wedding, pulled up high at the back of her head and spilling around her face, elegant and wild all at once.

She was _beautiful_ and something in him ached to see her, like he hadn’t seen her in an eternity.

Waylon choked on his next breath as someone pulled hard on the back of his suit, forcing the knot of his tie into his throat. He kicked and swore as he was dragged through the crowd and deposited in a back room, far from anyone that might have seen.

The man from before was back.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you, yet?” the strange man backed Waylon into a corner, pressing one hand to his cheek and jaw. “This world is _wrong,_ Waylon. You need to wake up and see that.”

“What do you mean, ‘Wrong’? What is _wrong_ here?” Waylon frowned, meeting the cold-blue of the man’s eyes. “There is nothing wrong.”

“What is your name?” The man stared back, a muscle in his jaw jumping when he pressed his teeth together for a moment. “Full name. Your job. Your wife’s name. How come you’re here?” he flicked a hand dismissively behind himself, towards where the party was happening. “Think, Waylon. Nothing about this is right and you know it.”

Waylon leaned back a little further, wincing when it sent a wave of pain through his body. “My name is Waylon Park. My wife’s name is Lisa Elizabeth Park. I’m here because it’s a charity ball thing my work is holding and I work as a-” he stopped and shook his head. “No, wait. I’m a programmer. I’m a guest of honor because I…I caught an error in the programming.” Waylon closed his eyes, covering them with his hands and digging the heels of his palms into them. “Something about…”

“Something about something?” Another voice chimed in.

Both Waylon and the blue-eyed man turned to look. “How long have we got?” the man asked the new arrival.

“Only a few minutes.”

Waylon looked at the new man and narrowed his eyes. His hair was shaved close, a military buzzcut, and his eyes were a pale-blue color that looked a little out of place in his color palette. He had broad shoulders and he wore dark pants and heavy boots that looked like they could easily break Waylon’s ribcage with one sharp kick. The man looked at Waylon for a moment before running a hand down his face. “I’m doing what I can to delay the process, but what I can do is not much.”

“Understandable,” the first man nodded and turned back to Waylon. “I am so sorry about this, but we need to speed this up.”

“Speed _what_ up?”

The man curled a fist in the front of Waylon’s shirt and dragged him closer, nudging their foreheads together. “Remember me, _Darling_?” he hissed the words out before smashing their mouths together, his free hand yanking Waylon’s hair, snapping his head back.

 

“ _A girl just like…”_

_The song floated through the building, seeming to echo through the halls until it was coming from every direction at once. His breathing was coming out in short, sharp pants of air, panic threatening to overtake him._

_God, what he would give to survive this._

_The footsteps were the only sure sign he had of where the Variant was, the only way to know where him and his knife would be next. The blood-soaked Groom, the one whispered about by the other patients, the one that even the cannibal seemed to fear._

_This was him._

_He moved from one shadow to the next, catching his foot on something in his haste._

_“AH HAH!” came the angry shout, the singing stopping for a moment. He tucked himself in further, using the small stature he had always been teased about. In school, as a teenager, it had been embarrassing to be short and thin, but now it was useful. Perhaps even life-saving._

_He shoved his face into his knees and waited for the danger to walk by._

_He could still hear the singing, sometimes._

_“You’d rather die,” came the affectation of insulted, “Than be with_ me? _Then die!”_

_The pain in his leg was so close to making him pass out. Or throw up. Maybe both. He was going to die in a dirty elevator shaft, was going to be destroyed before he could even get the video out to the public._

_Lisa and the boys…_

_God, he just wanted to see them again. Just once._

_The Morphogenic Engine was a thing of nightmares, he decided._

_And just like that, the choice was made – He would not and could not just stand by while it was used to destroy lives. He didn’t know what was being done to patients, not fully, but he knew he could not allow it to continue._

_He clicked ‘send’._

_Some work arounds and an onion router – not his best hack job ever – and he managed to get an email past the signal jammers. Bring the reporters in, tell the whole world._

_The singing had devolved into the man humming as he walked past Waylon’s hiding spot._

_The knife swung along at his side, a deadly gleam in the darkness._

_Blaire was a dick, a devil in a suit, and a psychopath who got off on hurting those under his control._

_It was strange how falling from a third story window felt a lot like flying._

_He hit the ground hard and the wave of pain that rushed through him blacked out the world for a moment. Gluskin screamed something incomprehensible at him and he blocked it out to try and not go unconscious in an asylum of people who seemed to want him dead._

_The concrete scraped his knuckles as he pushed himself to his knees._

_It was only a little more blood spilled, in the long-run, it wasn’t important._

_“…How happy you will be…”_

Waylon screamed as he pushed the man – Eddie – back from him, flattening himself against the wall.

With a nod, Eddie backed away, hands held in a gesture of surrender. “Do you remember, Waylon?” he glanced towards the other – Chris, that was Chris – and the two of them nodded at the same time, Chris disappearing back through the doorway.

“What’s happening?” Waylon took a deep breath, trying to completely drag himself completely out of his memories. “I do remember, yeah, but what’s going on?” he shook his head, scrubbing both of his hands rapidly up and down his face, shoving his glasses out of the way. “The last thing I remember was putting the device on their system, draining the data. The room filled with gas.”

“You were right,” Eddie let his hands slide into his pockets. “It was a sedative. The nanites in your system were knocked offline. Whatever was in the gas also seems to have been a hallucinogenic as well, considering what we’re looking at in here.” He jerked his head towards the ballroom.

Waylon looked down at himself and was almost not surprised at all to see the wrinkled sweater he had worn to work every day, paired with the button-down Lisa had introduced into his wardrobe the second year they had been dating. It was a familiar uniform, something he clung to as the world warped and changed, and he had grown older. “Right,” he muttered, swallowing nervously. “So when Chris says he’s doing what he can?”

“They’ve got you in a precarious position,” Eddie reached out a careful hand. “He has been trying to delay them experimenting on you by crashing their machines.”

With a nervous swallow, Waylon took his hand.

Eddie turned and marched them out of the room, heel-toe-heel, steady steps that made him look like he knew what he was doing. “We need to get you to wake up,” he barely turned his head to look over his shoulder at Waylon as he said it. “I am so sorry,” he said again. “I was unsure of how else to get you to remember.”

“Probably for the best,” Waylon flushed a brilliant red color. “I…Not pleasant memories, but good that you got me out of my head, just a little.”

“Still,” Eddie sighed, looking around the room. The crowd didn’t even seem to see them, but they moved aside to let them pass easily. “Is it just me or is the air getting darker?” he stopped and turned to look around. “Something feels off.”

His accent was fluctuating and Waylon nearly laughed at it. “Something is off,” he looked towards the stage, the microphone that had been waiting for him to give a small speech. “Shit,” he turned to look out the window behind the stage. “Walrider.”

It was the nightmarish cloud of smoke and ash that Miles had appeared to be on the steps of the asylum.

“Which means that Miles is here, somewhere,” Waylon tightened his grip on Eddie’s hand and started running for the stage, ducking and weaving between people. “Miles is – Shit, Miles is over-extending himself!”

“What does that mean?” Eddie managed to keep up with him, confusion evident in his voice.

“It means that the Walrider is burning through an improperly prepared host,” Waylon hopped the edge of the stage with ease, leaving Eddie standing on the floor next to it. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he called out as he took the microphone. “The revolution _will_ be televised!”

It was almost stupid how proud he was of himself for that, Waylon thought as he picked up the mic stand and pitched it through the glass.

 

When he opened his eyes, it was to a computer system flashing a warning at him and blood splattered on the ceiling.

Waylon pushed himself upright, feeling like he was going to vomit. He nearly pitched sideways off the bed he was on before he caught himself. There was a feeling like being trampled by a herd of something with hooves, but he ignored it as he yanked the I.V out of his arm and threw it to the side. The bag above it was wrinkled and empty, probably bone-dry by now.

“Park,” a voice came from the corner of the room, familiar and panicking all at once.

Miles was sitting behind the door, propped in the corner between the hinges and the wall. There was blood streaked down his face and pooling on his chin from his mouth. A spreading blot of it was on his stomach, looking like the world’s worst sort of Rorschach.

Practically falling off the bed in his haste to get to the other man, Waylon skidded across the floor. “Shit, Miles, what…”

“They were keeping you,” Miles shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t saturated in blood. There was so much that it was hard to tell what was his and what was not. “Need the nerd that’s at the heart of fucking Murkoff over, can’t finish it without you.”

“Miles,” Waylon hesitated, trying to figure out what to do. “Miles, you’re—”

“Currently bleeding to death,” Miles’ grin was bloodstained, and it made Waylon’s stomach turn. “Listen, Park,” he shook his head when Waylon tried to press his hands to his stomach to stem the flow of blood. “Park, you gotta listen to me.”

“What?”

“Park,” Miles reached up with the hand that had been pressing against his side, yanking almost painfully at Waylon’s hair. “Fuck, I wish I hadn’t met you.” He laughed, bitter and broken sounding. “But the weird-ass demon ghost thing attached to my body needs a host. Word on the street,” he paused to cough up what looked to be a half liter of blood. “Word is that you’re a better one than me. Contain it, use it, fuck Murkoff over and get the message out to the world,” his eyes closed for a moment and his head nodded, like he couldn’t hold it up anymore. “Friend of mine.”

“Friend of yours?” Waylon looked to the side, seeing the green-black glow of the Walrider approaching. It sent a shiver down his spine and he reached forward to clutch almost desperately at Miles’ hand, still on his leg. “Miles?”

“Langerman,” Miles managed to rouse himself, looking up blearily. “’S name is Blake Langerman. Hunt him down – Sent him after some parts of Murkoff that we couldn’t reach. Town where Gluskin moved.”

Waylon felt the hand in his hair go loose after a few seconds of silence from Miles and he leaned back on his heels.

The Walrider connected with his body, enough force in the impact to send him flying backward. It was just about a miracle that he didn’t go unconscious again, managing to curl an arm around the back of his head. When it was over, there was smoke curling around his hands like a particularly pleased cat.

“So this is what you’re like,” Waylon muttered.

He clenched his hands, spread them in front of his eyes, then stood up and faced the door. Outside of it, he could hear what sounded like at least a dozen pairs of boots hitting the ground. Murkoff’s own private firing squad.

Well then.

“Alright,” Waylon swallowed the nerves that threatened to choke him, looking to one side as the Walrider manifested next to him. “We need to get out of here.”

It seemed to nod before it lunged forward and dove through the door, seeping through the cracks.

The screams were interspersed with bullets ricocheting.

 

By the time he couldn’t hear anything else, Waylon had gotten back to the room he’d been attaching the devices to Murkoff’s network in.

Entering it in the first place suddenly felt like an entire lifetime before.

Waylon sat down in front of the computer, enabling the master commands on some of the files and disabling the signal jammers. Finding the video recording software, he pulled it up and hit record. “My name is Waylon Park,” he told the computer. “I worked for the Murkoff Corporation. I was a programmer working on something called the Morphogenic Engine. I’m here, in one of their buildings, to bring you the information directly from their servers. They’ve been experimenting on patients, altering them into something else called Variants. They stripped them of their names and rights and made them into _monsters_. A man named Chris Walker was one of their patients.

“His younger sister contacted me when my story first reached the media,” he took a deep breath, pausing. “If she’s listening: I’m sorry, he was already dead when you reached out to me. The thing they were working on killed him.” Waylon shook his head. “Murkoff found out that I’d reached out to reporters, specifically a man named Miles Upshur. They put me into the program because I tried to get help for those they were hurting. If you put family into Mount Massive Asylum, I am so sorry to tell you that they are probably already dead.”

Waylon turned away from the camera and sighed, navigating through the computer to drag the files out of the main directory. “What I’m sending with this video is everything I can yank out of the system. I don’t know what you’ll do with it, but it needs to get out there.” He made eye contact with the lens and smiled, knowing it didn’t reach his eyes. “The public has already seen the video footage I brought with me out of that place,” he told it. “You’ve seen some of the absolute worst that Murkoff did. You saw the horrors I saw, the cannibal and the man who tried to rip me apart because of some psychosis induced belief that I would be a bride.”

This was the hard part, he could just about feel Eddie’s wince.

“They are not the monsters Murkoff turned them into,” he told the camera, throwing as much belief into it as he could. “Underneath the way they acted, they used to be people who were in the world. Frank Manera and Eddie Gluskin and Chris Walker and all the others. People that Murkoff collected and decided were _lesser_ , somehow. As if whatever was in their heads was reason enough to destroy them, to make a host for a nanite-creature they created. For the sake of superstition and pseudo-science.”

Closing his eyes for a moment, Waylon nodded again. “Murkoff destroyed lives because they wanted to experiment with a ghost story.” He opened his eyes again, feeling the glare warping his expression. “Those people, the patients of Mount Massive, all had families who loved them, at one point. Or at the very least, people who cared for them, in one way or another.

“And the last thing I am going to say,” he let his mouth open in a snarl, felt the Walrider curling around his shoulders. “If anyone from Murkoff is watching this?”

He felt a large hand on his shoulder, the odd calm-but-furious nature of Chris Walker. The unending rage of Eddie Gluskin at his worst, tempered by the way he should have been. There was a new presence, too, something that felt suspiciously like Miles. “If anyone from Murkoff is watching this,” he continued, leaning back in the chair. “I am coming for _you_ , next.”

Waylon stood up from the chair, pushing it away with the backs of his knees. He put his hands on the edge of the table, leaning into the camera and grinning wildly. “You just destroyed everyone I care about,” he told it. “That’s _not_ a _safe_ place to _stand_.”

Giving a mocking salute with one hand, he clicked the stop button, ending the recording.

 

He could hear their voices as he stood outside the now-dark Murkoff building.

Anyone still alive had driven off, anyone dead wouldn’t care. Waylon turned to the Walrider, projecting at his side, and raised his chin. “Go inside, find anything that might set the place on fire,” he looked at the building out of the corner of his eye. “Light it up.”

The Walrider seemed to nod, turning into fog and disappearing.

Just a few minutes passed as Waylon continued to watch the building. Smoke rose into the air and flames started licking the frames of windows. The Walrider reappeared and faded into him.

Waylon turned on his heel and headed for the Jeep, getting into the driver’s seat and starting it up.

He took off without waiting around to watch it burn.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah hah ha...I hope y'all enjoyed this.


End file.
